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I won about $32 last night. Not too bad, until you consider that I started the night up $130. I was doing my VPP promotion at Nine.com and decided to play some 2/4 Limit. Once I sat down, I noticed how horrible the table was. I mean, some of these players had no clue. I immediately set my sites on the fishies, avoiding the one competent player, and kicked some fucking ass. When I left the room, my most profitable targets were gone, so I figured I earned myself some rest.

I came back hours later and decided to add to my winnings. Unfortunately, the crew at the table (and worse, lady luck) changed. I went from a table of stupid fish to a table of lucky fish and half-decent players, losing about $92 of my $100 buy-in (which in hindsight is short in limit) before making a come back and getting to about $50. I kept playing though and dipped to $27 before all the fish left and I made my exit, still up about $60 for the night. Interestingly, my beats were of the terrible' variety. My J9 flops KQT, turns is a blank, and the river is a T. I lose to KT calling me the whole way and rivering the full house. My JJ lost to 99 on the rivered 9. I lost to more than one runner-runner flush when the fish had nothing but K-high as he called my pocket Queens down to the river. But I wasn't upset and I'm still not upset. I was glad. Because in the end, those players will make me more money than I will lose to them. Que sera, right?

Yeah, that last $25...blogger table. Basically, I stumbled upon the post-WWDN crowd and joined the $25 max NL at Stars. I played terribly, due to my constant hammers that failed to do anything but cost me money. In fact, my last hand saw me lose with the hammer against a god aweful QQ held by WeakPlayer. Oh, and Weak, congratulations on your recent $20 180-SNG win and $10 Rebuy win at Stars. You are inching into that elusive High On Poker Poker Role Model category (current population, in no particular order: Mcdreamy, Cmitch, and DoubleAs).

Work has been hella-busy lately. I even have my flunkie summer intern drafting complicated motions in an attempt to lighten my load (not that I won't have to do copious editing). I have to say, though, I really like my job. I hate working. I mean, that's just me. But I love this fucking job, which is a real surprise for me, a man who was used to having a shitty job for a shitty firm making shitty money. Here, I am valued, I can excel and I have a good support staff. God bless!

I don't have much else for today. Thanks again for all the comments recently. I'll address You Decide #40 one more time. I'm glad we got a good discussion out of it. That's the whole purpose of the You Decide posts. I may have gotten a bit too clever with my strategies. Maybe that is why limit can sometimes be a boon to a player like me. It keeps me in check, no pun intended. Whatever the case may be, I think we can all agree that each player plays their hands according to their own philosophies. More importantly, there is no individual correct answer to how to play poker. There ARE generally accepted principles, like those contained within Harrington's books, but I still believe that each player has to find their own path. Mine happens to be a bit more...eccentric?...than many other players. That may label me as a poor player by some people who are less open to experimenting at the table. Fine. After all, my table image, especially live when I'm in character, is that of a dumb shlub. But I think that overall, my readers and those who commented could at least see that there was something behind that hand. It may not have been played optimally under some people's styles, but there was something there that was noteworthy, whether it was making a tough but good situation after stupidly making a bad one (the preflop called raise), whether it was making a bad play even though the odds were with me (post-flop), or whether it was a demonstration of how to just play horribly overall. My opinion, of course, is that the hand was NOT played horribly. It was an interesting situation where my plan and strategy actually came together and I still didn't win. But that, my friends, is poker. Thanks for commenting, thanks for reading, and thanks for play

3 Comments:

I just think you decided to try the play too early in the tournament. Which, obviously, is an opinion and not much else. =)

One thing I've been trying to do in situations like YD#40, is to look at the decision from a different perspective before I click "call".

In the case of YD#40 instead of saying, "I'm have the odds, do I want to call?" I'll instead ask, "Do I want to call a coinflip here for all of my chips?" (If you're good enough to figure out the odds, you can ask "Do I want to call with less than a 1% odds advantage?").

It's a shift in perspective and I think it's never a bad thing to take a little time to look at things that way when deciding to go all-in, especially when calling someone. I haven't convinced myself to lay anything down in the heat of the moment, yet, but it gives me a heck of a lot of information when I'm trying to figure out what went wrong after I've busted out.

I've been thinking out my plays a lot more than usual lately. In fact, Layne Flack suggested the same thing in a recent Circuit podcast.

Interestingly, I did think it over, but the question I asked myself was very much the flipside of the one you suggest. While you question "do I want to go all in on a cointoss," I was thinking, "do I have a chance to triple up on a coin toss or am I facing higher flush draws?" I decided that tripling up was worth it, if I could hit, since I didn't read either player as having a better flush draw.

Nothing really to that statement, other than to point out how interesting it is that we had the same philosophy regarding thinking it out before acting but had very different questions that we would ask there.

After reading your and Hoyazo's blogs today, I wrote a monster (for me) of a blog basically on the same subject you are talking about in your response to Pokerwolf's comment.

So many questions to ask, and it doesn't seem like there are right and wrong questions to ask.

It sure is interesting to read about what is going on in people's heads when they are thinking about a push, or a call.

In fact, I had a few *tough calls to make in the MatH tourney, and what pushed me to call was exactly what you stated in your comment.

"Is doubling up here worth the risk of going out here on a coinflip? Or have the slight chance that I am dominated?"

A lot of the time for me it comes down to pot odds and gambling whether I should take a stand in this hand, or wait for something better.

When I see a pot that is the same size as my stack for the taking, I will usually go after it if I have a coinflip or better chance of taking it down--if the opponent folds to a push, you can put the coin back in your pocket!